This walkthrough describes how you can create a bootable Windows® PE RAM disk on a USB flash drive (UFD). Windows PE RAM enables you to start a computer for the purposes of deployment or recovery. Windows PE RAM boots directly into memory, enabling you to remove the Windows PE media after boot.

A UFD. The size of the UFD must be at least 64 megabytes (MB) larger than your Windows PE image, plus the size of any additional files that you include.

Step 1: Set up a Windows PE build environment

In this step, you create a required directory structure that supports building a Windows PE image.

On your technician computer, click Start, point to All Programs, point to Windows OPK or Windows AIK, right-click Deployment Tools Command Prompt, and then select Run as administrator.

The menu shortcut opens a command-prompt window and automatically sets environment variables to point to all of the necessary tools. By default, all tools are installed at C:\Program Files\<kit>\Tools, where <kit> can be Windows OPK or Windows AIK.

At the command prompt, run the Copype.cmd script. The script requires two arguments: hardware architecture and destination location.

Step 2: Add additional customizations

This step is optional but recommended.

You can use ImageX to add applications and scripts to your Windows PE image that you might need while working in Windows PE. ImageX is a tool for capturing and applying images during deployment scenarios. For example, type the following command to copy the ImageX tool to the Windows PE image.

On your technician computer, copy all of the content in the \ISO directory onto your UFD. You can manually create the directory structure or use the xcopy command to automatically build and to copy the appropriate files from your technician computer to your UFD. For example,

This configuration boots directly into memory and is assigned the drive letter X, which does not correspond to the media (the UFD or CD-ROM) from which you booted. You can set the drive letter using the DISM /Set-TargetPath option. Ensure that you have sufficient memory to support the size of your Windows PE image, plus any additional memory requirements; for example, if you plan on running any customized applications that need additional working memory.